Lincoln and Native Americans

by Michael S. Green

Overview

First exploration of Lincoln’s relationship with the Native population in more than four decades

President Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution of Indigenous people in American history, following the 1862 uprising of hungry Dakota in Minnesota and suspiciously speedy trials. He also issued the largest commutation of executions in American history for the same act. But there is much more to the story of Lincoln’s interactions and involvement, personal and political, with Native Americans, as Michael S. Green shows. His evenhanded assessment explains how Lincoln thought about Native Americans, interacted with them, and was affected by them.

Although ignorant of Native customs, Lincoln revealed none of the hatred or single-minded opposition to Native culture that animated other leaders and some of his own political and military officials. Lincoln did far too little to ease the problems afflicting Indigenous people at the time, but he also expressed more sympathy for their situation than most other politicians of the day. Still, he was not what those who wanted legitimate improvements in the lives of Native Americans would have liked him to be.

At best, Lincoln’s record is mixed. He served in the Black Hawk War against tribes who were combating white encroachment. Later he supported policies that exacerbated the situation. Finally, he led the United States in a war that culminated in expanding white settlement. Although as president, Lincoln paid less attention to Native Americans than he did to African Americans and the Civil War, the Indigenous population received considerably more attention from him than previous historians have revealed.

In addition to focusing on Lincoln’s personal and familial experiences, such as the death of his paternal grandfather at the hands of Indians, Green enhances our understanding of federal policies toward Native Americans before and during the Civil War and how Lincoln’s decisions affected what came after the war. His patronage appointments shaped Indian affairs, and his plans for the West would also have vast consequences. Green weighs Lincoln’s impact on the lives of Native Americans and imagines what might have happened if Lincoln had lived past the war’s end. More than any many other historians, Green delves into Lincoln’s racial views about people of color who were not African American.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809338252
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	09/03/2021
Series:	Concise Lincoln Library
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	419,386
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Michael S. Green, an associate professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is the author or editor of three books on the Civil War, including Lincoln and the Election of 1860 (Southern Illinois University Press) and Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War, and several books on Nevada, as well as dozens of articles and essays. He is on the editorial advisory board of the University of Nevada Press and is the executive director of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

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Introduction
 
Abraham Lincoln ordered the largest mass execution and commutation in American history—for the same event, the Dakota uprising of 1862. Lincoln could be compassionate and distant, as his dealings with Native Americans show. He believed in reform, or never could have been a Republican or anti-slavery, but doubted the efficacy of reform movements that put morality above political action. A masterful politician, moderate, and man of his time, he shared or tolerated attitudes we now find troubling or even abhorrent, but was capable of growth and change. How quick he could be to effect change depended on forces swirling around and within him.

That understanding of Lincoln guides what follows. The literature on Lincoln and on Native Americans is rich, indeed. To analyze all sides of this equation would produce a far longer book. Some of the writing on Lincoln and on Native Americans, and both, appear in the text or notes. Although I intend this work to be accessible and acceptable to those who study Lincoln and those who study Native Americans, it belongs to a series on Lincoln, and Lincoln is the focus here.

Scholars seeking to divine Lincoln’s racial attitudes have varied from claiming near perfection to calling him an ardent white supremacist, to the view captured in the title of George Fredrickson’s Big Enough to Be Inconsistent. But almost all have addressed slavery and emancipation, with little attention to Native Americans—and then mainly the Dakota or the Black Hawk War of 1832. The leading biographies tend to deal briefly with Lincoln’s best-known encounters with Native Americans, and Phillip Paludan’s superb study of his presidency disposes of them in one long paragraph. “Lincoln may not have had any special animus toward Indians but he shared the widespread conviction that they lacked civilization and constituted an obstacle to the economic development of the West,” Eric Foner has pointed out, and called Lincoln’s policies “depressingly similar to those of virtually every nineteenth-century president.”

The only book-length monograph on this subject, David A. Nichols’s excellent Lincoln and the Indians, delineates the Civil War years, but says little about his pre-presidential years. Other works have examined key events and Native peoples of Lincoln’s presidency, or Native Americans’ fighting of the war. This study unifies these threads by considering his actions and attitudes in light of his earlier years and family encounters that predated his birth.

To understate the case, the literature on these subjects is enormous. Among the ways scholars have examined Native Americans in the nineteenth century, a few help explain Lincoln, his era, or both. One is that most Anglos saw them as a separate or at least distinct race, whereas today many Indigenous people consider themselves citizens of independent nations within the U.S. and object to being considered a minority race (This links to the issue of race as a social construct; as Nell Irvin Painter put it, “race is an idea, not a fact”). Some scholars have called for studying them in connection with foreign relations, because they belonged to independent nations, and driving them from their ancestral lands was imperialistic and expansionist. Granting the point, Lincoln referred matters involving them to the Interior Department, not the State Department; within the government, the agencies involved with Natives will be the focus here.

A related point involves settler colonialism. Titles like “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” suggest the thesis: “Settler colonialism destroys to replace.” Referring to the Trail of Tears, the most famous (but not only) American example, Patrick Wolfe wrote, “Why should genteel Georgians wish to rid themselves of such cultivated neighbours? The reason why the Cherokee’s constitution and their agricultural prowess stood out as such singular provocations to the officials and legislators of the state of Georgia … is that the Cherokee’s farms, plantations, slaves and written constitution all signified permanence.” Andrew Jackson and his allies wanted their land. One historian has noted, “Settler colonialism typically unfolds in association with nation building”—in which Lincoln and his predecessors and contemporaries engaged. The ensuing violence led to terms like genocide or ethnic cleansing, and deterritorialization and reterritorialization to explain how colonial powers cleared the land of native species and people, especially in the Third World. Europeans’ imperialism did much to shape North America and eliminated as much of the native presence as possible as they were “superimposing their own values and institutions upon it.

Lincoln’s role in and view of settler colonialism and deterritorializing in the U.S. will unfold here, though these interpretations mainly loom in the background. To league Lincoln with Jackson, for example, goes too far on the basis of the evidence. Clearly, many Americans sought to dispossess Native Americans of their land and culture. Lincoln might be called a participant who was unthinking except when he took time to think about it. Then, he voiced displeasure with the situation that Indigenous people faced but did little about it, because of the war for the Union and emancipation, which mattered more to him and most others; the difficulties in changing a system that profited politicians and businesspeople whose support he sought and needed; his prejudices and inclinations; the capital and population expansion that conflicted with the Natives’ presence; and his political sense, which made it obvious that many Americans had no intention of treating Indians equally or fairly. We obviously cannot know what he might have done if he had lived.

This contribution to The Concise Lincoln Library examines these issues, what Lincoln said and did in regard to Native Americans, and the events and ideas that influenced him or that he had to contemplate. As much as possible, the focus will be on Lincoln. I have benefited enormously from scholars of Native American history but make no pretensions to being an ethnohistorian, nor will I constantly address what happens in the context of the interpretations mentioned above.

One problem should be addressed at the outset: while Lincoln is the focus, he disappears at times in the ensuing pages, even during his presidency. To explain what went on requires discussions of events far from him and people who represented him but never communicated with him. The situation was comparable to royal officials in the thirteen colonies, and representatives of the United States and other nations in foreign lands before instant communication was possible. They acted as they thought their superiors wanted or best for their government. For example, Lincoln did not authorize the Sand Creek Massacre, but his appointees were crucial to it.

In addition, this is unabashedly a history of Lincoln and Native Americans. Where applicable, I explain what ensued after Lincoln, or where his policies led. But for the most part, this story ends at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865. Not because nothing of importance happened afterward, but to keep the focus where it belongs: as the title suggests, on Lincoln and Native Americans.

Six chapters and a conclusion follow. Chapter 1 examines Lincoln’s ancestry and early years to broaden our understanding of the views he developed on Native Americans. Chapter 2 delves into his pre-presidential career in relation to Native peoples, including his service in the Black Hawk War, the Whig Party, his marriage, and the Republican Party. Chapter 3 focuses on the people around him who were making policy and dealing with Native Americans, the reformers who tried to change them, and how Lincoln’s main personal encounter with Native Americans as president showed the difficulty those reformers faced.

The next three chapters deal with important issues involving Native Americans during Lincoln’s presidency. Chapter 4 addresses Indian Territory and how Lincoln erred at the start, then ran into political problems in trying to correct the error. Chapter 5 describes the Dakota uprising in 1862, why it happened, and how Lincoln and his administration responded. Chapter 6 takes a geographic approach to how Lincoln and Republicans faced westward, and the contradictions of their free labor ideology and opening the Far West to homesteaders and railroad builders. It looks at the regions of the West and similarities and differences in policy. The conclusion assesses Lincoln’s words and deeds in relation to Native Americans, and what they mean.

Both primary and secondary accounts drive this work. I am deeply indebted to Nichols’s Lincoln and the Indians, and students of Lincoln and his time and place. I have changed some inconsistent capitalization in nineteenth-century writing, especially by William Herndon as he wrote out interviews with Lincoln’s family and friends, but otherwise avoid corrections. I try to use proper terminology in referring to Native American groups—the Dakota, for example, instead of the Sioux, except when quoting others. I interchangeably use Indigenous people, Native Americans, Native people, Indians, and similar terms. I intend no disrespect, inaccuracy, or opacity, but this reflects the varied terms used by Native peoples, their diversity and that of the Anglos who fought them, sometimes tried and more often refused to accept or understand them, and sought to help them as they considered best. To cite one such person: Abraham Lincoln.
 

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements 

Introduction 
Chapter 1: Beginnings  
Chapter 2: Militias and Mosquitoes  
Chapter 3: People, Politics, and Bureaucracy      
Chapter 4: The Problem with Indian Territory  
Chapter 5: Lincoln and the Dakota 
Chapter 6: Peopling and Unpeopling the West 
Conclusion 

Notes
Bibliography 
Index 

Editorial Reviews

"Lincoln and Native Americans accomplishes Green’s goal of demonstrating that Lincoln had a complex view of and relationship with Native Americans. . .Those interested in Lincoln, Native Americans, and Civil War history should read this well-written book."—Kathie Beebe, H-Net Reviews

"Lincoln and Native Americans is a useful and well-written synthesis of Lincoln's views on Native Americans over the course of his life and especially of his policies during the Civil War."—Jameson R. Sweet, The Annals of Iowa

“Examining Lincoln’s relationship with Native Americans isn’t a topic that’s been explored extensively. In his book, Green examines the opposing ways in which Lincoln regarded Native Americans and African Americans. And with this mixed bag of faults and merits, Green says, the story of Lincoln and Native Americans offers the chance to ‘maybe see him a little more fully.’”—John Przybys, Las Vegas Review-Journal

"Lincoln and Native Americans is a thoroughly fascinating scrutiny of Lincoln's views and actions toward people of color who were not African-American, and a welcome contribution to personal and public library American History shelves. Highly recommended!"—James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review

“In his concise yet careful look at Abraham Lincoln and his relations with Indian peoples, Michael S. Green has given us a revealing snapshot of a complex man coping with one of his nation’s oldest conundrums during the war that was its supreme crisis of survival. It is a valuable, worthwhile read.”—Elliott West, author of The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story
 
“Abraham Lincoln had a complex relationship with Native Americans, forged in his youth and reshaped throughout his life and career. In this ambitious but brief and readable volume, Green presents Lincoln as a man of his times who neither hated nor championed Native Americans and as president undeniably prioritized the Civil War over Indian policy. Grounded in voluminous scholarship, Green’s study deserves wide readership.”—Bradley R. Clampitt, editor of The Civil War and Reconstruction in Indian Territory 
 
“Beginning with the Lincoln family’s experience and covering all of the major moments, from the Black Hawk War to the Dakota uprising, the Bear River and Sand Creek massacres, and the Long Walk of the Navajo, Green provides a concise and compelling examination of Lincoln’s actions and attitudes towards Indigenous peoples. A complex Lincoln emerges from this careful analysis.”—David M. Wrobel, author of America’s West: A History, 1890-1950

“[This] concise examination of Lincoln and Native Americans is a valuable contribution to the scholarship on our 16th president.”—Derek D. Maxfield, Emerging Civil War

“Lincoln and Native Americans serves as a necessary and brief […] framing of the history of Native America as it intersected Lincoln’s personal and political lives and, more fully, an introduction to the political context of Native American relations just before and during Lincoln’s presidency.”—Scott W. Berg, Civil War Book Review

“Lincoln and Native Americans accomplishes Green’s goal of demonstrating that Lincoln had a complex view of and relationship with Native Americans. After all, Green contends that even though the president prioritized winning the Civil War, saving the Union, and ending slavery over Native American issues, Lincoln was much better at Indian affairs than his numerous contemporaries, including those who served as president before and after his tenure. Those interested in Lincoln, Native Americans, and Civil War history should read this well-written book.”—Kathie Beebe, H-CivWar

“Green handles complex information adroitly, creating a smooth, readable narrative that handles considerable detail without ever getting bogged down in it.”—David Marshall, StrategyPage​

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